Johnny went to Sharkey.
“Come this way, where we can talk a bit,” Sharkey said, raising his voice to be heard over the saloon clamor, and motioning to Johnny to follow.
Johnny trailed Sharkey along the length of the long bar toward the rear of the building. Coming out around the bar’s far end they entered a short passage and went into a dimly lit storeroom reeking of alcohol fumes. The noise level was significantly lower.
“A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Cross,” Sharkey said, thrusting out a hand.
Johnny shook it. “The same applies, Mr. Sharkey.”
“It’s just plain Sharkey, lad.”
“Call me Johnny.”
“That was nice work, the way you took down Bigger. But it won’t be so easy taking down Crabshaw and Marston and the Gun Dogs. Not to be nosy, but would you mind telling me your plans on that score?
“I’m just asking on behalf of my establishment here. I’m not too keen on seeing it turned into a battlefield, y’ understand. I lose enough customers through the usual shootings, stabbings, and brawls without hosting a private war that’s none of my affair. I’m saying this in all friendly respect, mind. No hard feelings but you must see my concern.”
“I surely do, and I’d like to set your mind at ease. My friends and I mean to kill the Gun Dogs but we’ll do it outside. We’ve no intention of turning the premises into a shooting gallery.”
“Well that’s grand, Johnny. I like how you handle yourself, and I’ll tell the world that George St. George is as fine a boyo as you’ll find on the river. But an innkeeper can’t afford to take sides, not in a private grudge fight. Even though it’s my belief that Crabshaw and Marston are a pair of low-down stinking polecats who ought to be blown sky-high along with all their bullyboys and good riddance to them!
“That’s my own personal belief, mind, and I can’t let it affect my business.”
“Like you said, Sharkey, no hard feelings.”
“I’m glad you’re taking this so well, Johnny. And since we’ve reached a basis of mutual understanding, I’m sure you won’t take it amiss if I inquire when you and your friends might be moving along? I don’t want to be inhospitable, but the Gun Dogs are liable to become mighty antsy and I wouldn’t want them coming in the saloon looking for you.”
“Say no more, we’ll drink up and be gone.”
“You’re a gentleman, Johnny, and I don’t mind saying so. It’s rare to find someone who sees the other fellow’s point of view.”
“We didn’t come to get your place shot up, Sharkey. Just let us get set and we’ll clear out.”
“Take as much time as you need, son,” Sharkey said magnanimously. “But not too much time,” he added quickly.
Johnny readied himself to go. “I’m on my way, I’ll tell the others what’s going down,” he said. “One more thing, though—”
“Yes? and what might that be, lad?” Sharkey asked.
“You said this is a private fight. But is it?”
“How do you mean?”
“Barbaroux already ate up all of Clinchfield, you know that. And from what I’ve seen the Combine is starting to crowd Halftown pretty hard. How long before he comes for you?”
“There’s wisdom in your words, Johnny boy, and don’t think I haven’t given the matter some hard thought on more than one sleepless night. I’ve got no use for Barbaroux and his highfalutin ways, carrying on like he’s the King of England.”
From the venom with which Sharkey said this last, it seemed there was no lower, more insidious comparison in his way of thinking.
“And Lord knows,” Sharkey continued. “I don’t hold with the likes of his pet, Malvina the Conjure Woman, with her poisonings and heathenish deviltries; it’s a stench in the nostrils of the righteous. You’ve put your finger on the problem and no mistake, Johnny. What to do about Barbaroux? I’ve thought and I’ve thought about it for some time now.”
“What did you decide?”
“I decided that I don’t know what to do,” Sharkey said sadly.
“Well, if you should want to get in on some action, send word to George in the Hollow. But don’t wait too long,” Johnny cautioned, “things are going to start breaking fast. Real fast.”
Johnny went out of the passage with Sharkey following. When they entered the main room, Slip Rooney hurried over to Sharkey to whisper something in his ear.
“Wait a minute, Johnny, this concerns you,” Sharkey said, “you and your friends. Seems the Gun Dogs have a couple of men out back on the pier.”
“That’s good to know. Thanks, Sharkey.”
“I’m sticking my neck out a wee bit here, but I can’t abide those scoundrels sneaking around the place like weasels nosing into a hen coop. There’s a side door out of here if you’ve a mind to use it. You just might surprise a few of them boyos.”
“Believe I’ll take you up on that offer. Let me get George first,” Johnny said.
“I’ll be waiting,” said Sharkey.
Johnny went across the room to his table, moving easy and confident, betraying no great haste. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself if the enemy had spies in the saloon, as they well might.
The foursome at the table looked up at him expectantly.
“The Gun Dogs are starting to crowd the play. They’ve got a couple men prowling the back of the pier. We don’t want any guns at our backs when we make our play. We need to take back the initiative,” Johnny said, smiling, his manner relaxed as though he was just passing the time with some friends.
“George and I will take care of the back shooters—quietly if possible but definitely with dispatch,” he went on. “Then we’ll go on shore and get behind the Gun Dogs. We’ll send Roe Brand to tell you when we’re in position. Come on out and we’ll get the ball rolling.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Gator Al said.
“It’s a go,” said Wake Spindrift.
“That gives us time for another drink,” Belle Nyad said.
Johnny Cross and George St. George took their leave of the others and went to Sharkey waiting at the far end of the bar.
“Slip will unlock the door and let you out—once you’re outside he’ll lock it and it won’t be opened again,” Sharkey said. “That’s as much as I can do . . . I’d like to do more but I can’t. I’m in no position to go against Barbaroux openly.”
“Thanks for all you have done,” Johnny said.
“I won’t shake hands or make any sign you’re going—too many spying eyes around.”
Johnny nodded. “See you.”
“Good luck, men,” Sharkey said.
“And good hunting,” he added.
Slip Rooney went into the passageway, Johnny and George St. George trailing. At midpoint a short jog opened on the right-hand side, more of an alcove than anything else. At the far end of it stood a barred door.
Slip Rooney lifted the bar and opened the bolt. He eased the door open . . . it opened outward. He stuck his head outside and looked around. He stuck his head back inside, nodding.
George St. George stepped outside first.
Johnny pressed a coin into Slip Rooney’s hand. “A bottle for my friends at the table.”
“You’ve given me too much,” the other said.
“Keep the change,” Johnny said, “and tell Sharkey thanks.”
Johnny went out, easing the door closed behind him. There was the sound of a bolt thudding into place and the bar being reapplied to the door.
The door opened on the upstream side of the pier. The light was low, the yellow crescent moon shedding more of a glow than the weak light filtering through the saloon’s small square oil-papered windows. Mists rose off the river.
The two stood with their backs to the wall for a moment, getting used to the night’s dimness and gloom.
Johnny looked left, looked right, looked left again. “Pier’s clear on this side,” he said low voiced, “but there’s supposed to be a couple of Gun Dogs nearby.”
/> “I’m ready for them,” George St. George said, patting his sheathed belt knife.
“Let’s get set for a getaway before we make our move,” suggested Johnny.
“I’m with you there,” George agreed.
Torchlight flickered at the landward side of the pier, much of it blocked by the saloon’s bulk, keeping this side of the pier in heavy shadows, which hid the duo from the Gun Dogs gathered on land.
The upstream side was where Roe Brand was waiting in the pirogue. Johnny couldn’t see him at first.
George St. George vented a trilling chirp, the uncanny imitation of a night bird’s call.
From somewhere near shore came the return reply of a bullfrog’s croaking. Its source was no bullfrog but rather Roe Brand, whose pirogue was hidden under some brush overhanging the shoreline.
The boat pushed out into the river, gliding into view in near-silence, making for the pier’s edge.
“That birdcall was pretty good,” Johnny said admiringly.
“One of the things you pick up in the swamp,” George said offhandedly.
Roe Brand backwatered with the paddle, halting the pirogue below where the other two stood at the pier’s edge.
“Throw me a line, Roe,” George rasped in a stage whisper.
Roe Brand set the paddle safely inboard and picked up a length of coiled rope that lay in the bottom of the boat and had been brought along for this purpose. It had thick knots at each end for weighty casts.
Holding on to one end of the line, he pitched the rope underhanded, upward and out. The end hit the edge of the pier and fell back into the water. Roe Brand gathered up the line and tried again.
George snagged the line, taking in some of the slack.
Johnny stiffened.
“I’ll rig this end of the line—What’s up, Johnny?”
“Thought I heard something.”
“I didn’t hear anything . . .”
“I’ll take a looksee while you tie the rope.”
Johnny light-footed it along the wall to the building’s rear near the end of the pier, the place where the sounds seemed to have come from. He paused at the rearward edge of the saloon’s wall just in time to hear deck planks creak under the weight of footsteps. He peeked around the corner.
A man was on the apron of the pier. He stood smoking at the downstream side, his back to Johnny.
The dark figure’s head was tilted forward, looking down at the floating raft and river traffic. He puffed away at a hand-rolled cigarette, a dome halo of orange light pulsing around his head with each puff.
Gun Dog or not? Johnny couldn’t tell. He hung fire, not ready to commit to action. He didn’t want to do in some poor soul who came out here for a smoke.
The smoker reached the end of his cigarette, flicking the still-lit butt out into space. Its orange speck of ember arced out and down, going dark when it hit the water.
The stranger turned and began walking landward along the downstream side, vanishing behind the building.
Johnny went back the way he came. George St. George had finished throwing a loop over the top of a piling, securing the line. It descended straight down to the water where Roe Brand sat in the pirogue, holding the opposite end of the rope.
“Well?” George demanded.
“It was a fellow taking a smoke, but damned if I could tell if he was a Gun Dog or not,” Johnny said. “This is a trickier proposition than I thought. How do you tell a Gun Dog from an innocent person?”
“I know most of those sons by sight,” George St. George said thoughtfully.
“Kind of dark out here though. Reckon we’ll have to make the rounds of the pier. Whoever tries to throw down on us is a Gun Dog.”
“That could get kind of noisy—”
“Hey! . . . What’re you two doing?”
The harshly barked query came from a thickset looming figure that hurried toward them from landward on their side of the pier.
“Now that sounds like a Gun Dog,” George said dryly.
“I believe you’re right,” Johnny agreed.
“Sounds like a Yankee, too.”
“Don’t he?”
The newcomer was not the smoker Johnny had seen but a different fellow, a big man wearing a derby hat that would not have looked out of place in Manhattan’s notorious Five Points where the gangs of New York thronged and battled but which seemed out of place on the Halftown waterfront.
The figure resolved into a big blocky bruiser with a paintbrush mustache and a fat lit cigar stuck in a side of his mouth. “What’re you doing back here?” he growled.
“My pard’s getting sick over the side here, can’t hold his liquor,” George St. George said easily.
Johnny took hold of a piling top and held on with both hands, standing in a bent-legged crouch with his head hanging down over the water.
“You don’t belong here!” the derby wearer accused.
“What do you want him to do, get sick inside? That ain’t sanitary, mister,” George said reasonably.
“Come out of there into the light so I can get a better look at the two of yez,” Derby Hat said.
“What light? It’s dark out here,” George pointed out.
“What’s it to you? Making noises like a lawman!” Johnny said, slurring his words. “Folks come to Halftown to get away from that kind of thing!”
“I’m Wyler Hemphill for what it’s worth and when I say jump, you jump!”
“You a Gun Dog?” George said silkily, moving toward Hemphill.
Hemphill grabbed for his gun. His mistake was not having it drawn and cocked before bracing Johnny and George.
George already had his knife in hand as he lunged for the burly tough and ripped him up the middle.
The shock paralyzed Wyler Hemphill, freezing him in place. The lit cigar dropped from his gaping mouth, falling to the planks of the pier.
They two were so close that George could feel Hemphill’s foul-smelling breath on his face. Wyler Hemphill was dead on his feet.
Johnny helped ease the corpse to the planks.
“That was nice work, George,” he said.
George wrenched his knife free of the corpse. The blood was inky black in the moonlight.
“A Yankee Gun Dog! How low can Crabshaw and Marston go?” he wondered aloud.
“Psst!” Roe Brand hissed from below. “Y’all all right up there?”
“Yes, yes,” Johnny said.
A cloud covered the moon, veiling the scene with still more rolling darkness.
Footsteps approached, coming from the riverward side of the pier.
Johnny and George stood with their backs to the wall, flattening themselves as much as possible. There was nothing they could do about the body of Wyler Hemphill. In the absence of moonlight it looked like a pile of rubbish strewn on the boards.
Not far from the truth at that, Johnny thought.
A figure appeared, moving landward along the upstream side of the pier, a blacker man-shape emerging from blackness. It called:
“Wyler? That you? It’s me, Custis . . . You back here? Yo, Wyler!”
The topmost pointed tip of the crescent moon began slicing through the clouds, loosing thin sheets of pale moonlight.
Something in Custis’s outline looked familiar to Johnny. Custis was the cigarette smoker he’d seen earlier.
“Wyler? . . . Damn! So dark here I can’t see a danged thing!—slippery, too,” Custis said, talking to himself, unaware he was treading in Wyler Hemphill’s blood.
He stumbled over the dead body, narrowly avoiding a fall. “What in the Sam Hill—!”
The sickle moon tore free of the clouds, releasing a flood of moonlight that revealed the savaged corpse sprawled at Custis’s feet.
“Oh, Lordy!—urk!”
Johnny was behind Custis with a length of rope in his hands, part of the slack of the line tied to the piling. He hooked it over Custis’s head and neck, using it as a strangling cord to garrote him.
Johnny leane
d back hauling on the rope, bending Custis backward, lifting him so that his kicking feet were in the air.
A quick knife thrust by George slipped under the rib cage stabbing Custis in the heart, killing him instantly and ending his misery. The body joined Hemphill’s on the planks.
“Is that the last of them on the pier?” George asked.
“One way to find out—we got to make the circuit,” Johnny said. “I’ll do it. You stay here and make sure nobody finds the bodies. Or better still, let’s drop them in the water.”
“Not yet. That’ll drive the gators wild.”
Wyler Hemphill’s derby hat had rolled clear of the corpse and lay several feet away.
“How d’you think I’d look in one of those citified hats?” George St. George asked.
“Like a danged fool,” Johnny replied.
“That’s what I thought . . .”
Johnny started landward, accidentally kicking the derby off the pier into the water. “Oops.”
He moved alongside the wall to the front of the saloon. Standing in the shadows, looking around the corner, he surveyed the scene.
Things were much the same as before on the pier fronting the Dead Drunk: amorous couples, groups of men, drunks. The people were different but the types were the same. Johnny detected in none of them the taut readiness of professional gunmen on the job.
Bully Bigger was nowhere to be seen . . . he had either gone off under his own power or been taken away. Or maybe he fell off the pier into the water. Johnny didn’t give a damn as long as he was gone.
At the landward end of the pier the Gun Dogs were massed facing the saloon. Their reinforcements had not yet arrived. If they glimpsed Johnny Cross glide through the idlers lounging outdoors, it meant nothing to them. They didn’t know him from Adam.
Johnny followed the downstream side of the pier riverward, encountering no one else, no hostiles, friendlies, or neutrals. He had this side of the pier to himself. Rounding the rear of the building, he rejoined George St. George.
The two of them dragged the bodies one by one away from where they’d been killed and out to the back of the saloon before dropping them over the side. They didn’t want them becoming gator bait too close from where they would use the rope to lower themselves to the pirogue.
Two successive splashes raised waterspouts. After a pause the river surface below began to heave and stir with restless unease as gators thrashed out from under the pier, drawn by the scent of fresh blood and meat.
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